Victoria LaCivita announced yesterday on social media that she has joined the White House Communications team, which is led by President Trump’s longtime political advisor and current White House Communications Director Steven Cheung.
The Gen Z executive said of her new position as Regional Communications Director: “Working with reporters across the country on behalf of @POTUS and the American people is a dream come true.”
Note: Ms. LaCivita landed her first job at the White House in 2018 as a summer intern in the Office of Public Liaison. (She graduated from the University of Virginia in 2020.)
I’m excited to announce that I’ve joined the incredible @WhiteHouse Communications team as Regional Communications Director!
— Victoria LaCivita (@VLaCivita) July 29, 2025
Working with reporters across the country on behalf of @POTUS and the American people is a dream come true. 🇺🇸
LaCivita is the daughter of Chris LaCivita (as seen below), who served as senior adviser to Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.
Happy birthday @ChrisLaCivita 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/XLSPm83neh
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) July 15, 2025
Mr. LaCivita is also known as the chief strategist behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth media campaign, which attacked the military record of Vietnam veteran and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, Senator John Kerry (D-MA), who was defeated by incumbent President George W. Bush.
Note: While serving as a Naval officer during the Vietnam War, Kerry was in charge of a swift boat, and received multiple combat medals including three Purple Hearts. Ads produced by the Swift Boat Veterans featured other veterans casting doubt on Kerry’s heroism in Vietnam.
Kerry said later of the attack that “they just made things up. They made them up right, left and center.”
But Kerry also acknowledged the impact the swift boat ad had on his campaign, saying of LaCivita’s effort: “I remember being in Ohio and listening to that ad and I called my campaign headquarters and said, ‘If I heard that ad, I wouldn’t vote for me.'”
The subject of “swift boating” a candidate came up again during the Trump/Vance 2024 presidential campaign, when then-VP candidate JD Vance publicly questioned whether his Democratic opponent, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz — a 24-year veteran of the National Guard — had practiced “stolen valor” after Walz claimed to have carried “weapons in war.” (Walz was not deployed in a war zone.)
In August 2024, Trump chief strategist Chris LaCivita said about using the tactic against both Walz and Kerry: “Birds of a feather will be tarred together.”
